Setting Up a Dedicated Game Server

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Editor’s Note: This story is actually Chapter 12 of the new ExtremeTech book, LAN Party: Hosting the Ultimate Frag Fest It’s got everything you need to know to throw a ragin’ LAN party: ground rules (what and why), power plays (the plug-in kind), getting connected (hubs, switches, and routers)–even what to order on the pizza. Read this chapter and if you want to know more, pick up a copy of the book today!

Chapter 12

In this chapter:

Types of computers to use

Dedicated servers

Changing settings

Command-line interfaces

Graphical interfaces

There are two ways you can set up a server to function, although only one works for larger parties:

Nondedicated (sometimes known as Listen mode).

With this type of setup, not only can you host a game, you can play at that computer. This sounds greatuntil you realize that your PC is most likely maxed out just from running a single-player game. Asking it to keep track of six or seven other players and send out constant messages and update your screen 30 times a second with fabulous 3D graphics is enough to make almost any machine stutter. And most of them will.

Unfortunately, when computer games become overloaded, they tend to prioritize things so that the local player’s game runs smoothly, sometimes waiting hundreds of milliseconds before getting around to tending to requests from remote PCs. This processing delay is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same thing as a bad ping timethe exact thing you’re supposed to be avoiding when you hold a LAN party! And since one person at your party (the person at that machine) experiences no lag while everyone else is suffering, it can lead to some real bad blood in a competitive environment.

Dedicated. With this setup, your computer skips producing any fancy graphics. Instead, it dedicates all of its processing power to keeping track of where everyone is and who’s shot who, and broadcasting that information back to all of its clients ASAP.

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